


The Wolf

by Katherine



Series: The Receiver of Memory and Wolves [1]
Category: A Companion to Wolves - Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette, The Giver - Lois Lowry
Genre: Gen, Psychic Wolves, Scent names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 08:43:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5999431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having been selected and met his wolf, Jonas learns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wolf

The wolf stepped to him, more lightly than she usually moved, and prodded at him with the edge of the folder she was holding in her mouth. Jonas had not looked at the folder given to him at the Ceremony of Twelve for weeks; it held only that one sheet of paper. He didn't want to read again the frighteningly powerful final rule: You may lie.

He kept the folder (left slightly damp with wolf-spit) in his hands as the wolf sent him a succession of mental images. Gradually Jonas picked out the theme of these. _You wanted a puppy. Puppies chew things._

She was no puppy. Although he had not when he first seen her known anything about wolves, about any animals, he could tell she was an adult. Jonas had watched his sister Lily grow up from the newchild first placed into his family unit. Each evening, now, there was the newchild Gabriel, brought home by Jonas's Father for the rarely-allowed additional nurturing. A puppy would have to be something like a newchild, with big eyes and unsteady movements.

The first time that Jonas saw the wolf, in the Giver's room the day after the Ceremony in which Jonas was told of his selection, she moved slowly and stiffly. Jonas sensed age, and expectancy, as he had seen sometimes in the House of the Old. There was a restlessness to her that made her different from the larger, male wolf lying next to the Giver's chair. In the wolf that was to be his, Jonas saw something else, the depths of which he did not realise until a long time after, when he had received memories from the Giver that gave him the reality of emotions. She was angry.

She was less angry now. They spent Jonas's training after school in the Giver's room, and every evening she ran beside Jonas's bicycle to his home. They were still learning to touch each other's minds, the bond between them strengthening.

* * *

That night Jonas knew that he should leave Gabriel in the crib set next to his bed. Sound sleep in the correct place was important for a newchild, especially one who had been permitted more than the usual care. But he kept remembering the feeling of family in the memories from the Giver. He wanted... He held himself still, watching Gabe stirring, as he decided on the word. He wanted _closeness._

So he lifted Gabe from the crib and set him down carefully. His wolf observed this with her pale eyes before putting her front paws up on the bed next to the newchild, then wiggling until most of her was stretched up, only her back feet and tail in contact with the floor.

Gabe fell back asleep with Jonas's hand still on his bare back and the wolf's side against his small reaching hands.

* * *

"Wolves don't have family units," Jonas said to the Giver, thinking aloud. "Do they have the closeness you've shown me in the memories?" He meant family, beyond the way the Community assigned people spouses and children.

"Yes, these two are related," the Giver explained. "She is his daughter." He touched his wolf between his grey-furred shoulders, looking downwards instead of at Jonas. "I felt Rosemary was mine."

* * *

Early in his training, Jonas had asked the Giver, feeling apprehensive of the answer, if it was only the Giver's wolf that had what the Giver called a scent name.

"Your wolf has one." the Giver said. "But you would not understand it yet."

His wolf told him her scent name nearly a year later, after he had viewed the recording of the private Ceremony of Release his Father performed, after Jonas knew what release was, after he stormed and wept. Her scent name was determination, a self held to stillness, a lingering regret. _Release._

Jonas clenched his hand in the thick fur of her ruff, where the coarse hairs were damp from his earlier tears. "I can't ask to be released," he said aloud. "I won't leave you. We will go together to Elsewhere."


End file.
